Vehicle Documentation - help wanted

[The Hood]

I think it would be a good idea to create a guide to the various vehicles in pak128.Britain (especially rail) - there's quite a few vehicles out there which cover a range of functions (some express passenger, some heavy goods).  Unless you are a train geek you might not know which to use for the situation you require in the game, so I'm proposing a guide, with a brief entry for each loco (stating intro and retire year, and a typical consist and use, along with any other info that may be useful).  Would anybody like to contribute to this?  I can provide the information I used for balancing purposes, but I think if I made the guide I wouldn't be able to create as many new graphics.  Thoughts / volunteers?

[Maragil]

I'll volunteer - post it on English Wiki perhaps as well as in forums?

[jamespetts]

Hmm, I find looking things up on Wikipedia is generally very helpful...

[The Hood]

I'll volunteer - post it on English Wiki perhaps as well as in forums?

Sounds a good suggestion to me - thanks!

Hmm, I find looking things up on Wikipedia is generally very helpful...

Yes, but (a) it isn't simutrans specific (e.g. how many cars should I run this loco with?), and (b) the information isn't always there

[Maragil]

I meant simutrans wikipedia

[The Hood]

Maragil / anyone else who is interested:

Here is the spreadsheet I use to do balancing.  It's mostly fairly cryptic, but if you look in the rail cost tab category b is a vague description, and category c is the consist I use to do the balancing calculations - i.e. if you run the stated convoy and keep it full half of the time you will make a profit (roughly speaking).  I suggest you add this info to the wiki/document/whatever as a suggested convoy (some of the multiple units have forced consists, but don't worry about that).

Just ask if you're confused

[dannyman]

Hello,

I took the liberty of uploading this spreadsheet to share via Google Docs.  The hood, if you object or want to replace with a newer version, let me know.  I'm not really understanding it too much, but I can hand out write access.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AnSgbuCFYEiadFh2cjVtSkF0Nl8wSHlvSV9ZZ1RCWkE&hl=en

(I'm a Linux user with no access to MS Office.)

[The Hood]

No problem with that at all, except I'm re-writing the spreadsheet as part of the new balancing process.  The formulae should all stay the same though, just I'm calculating costs instead of guessing them, and I also want to add a calculation for purchase costs.

Also, if anyone wants this as an openOffice spreadsheet (.ods), I can do that as that's what I use.